The Hundredth Man

by J. A. Kerley

  I stepped from the porch. “Hell, Doc, half the time I’m unsure of my own name, but I do know that one good brain and one good hand are a lot more than many people have.”

  Caulfield glanced at the building and took a deep breath. “Yeah. Maybe one of these days I’ll show up on their doorstep. See what’s what.”

  I walked to my truck and dug through my traveling bag until I found a cotton shirt. It was white, it was clean, and it was short sleeved. I tossed it up to Caulfield and he trapped it against his chest.

  “Maybe it’s time to shed the mourning shirts,” I said. I climbed into the truck and started the engine. I put the truck in reverse and flipped a wave. He hadn’t thrown the shirt on the ground, that was something.

  “Detective Ryder,” he called as I started to back away.

  I stopped and leaned out the window. He said, “I was just wondering, does that one guy still work at the morgue? The angry man?”

  I nodded. “Walter Huddleston. Yes. He’ll probably be there until he dies. I imagine he’ll be a hundred and twenty.”

  Confusion furrowed Caulfield’s brow. “Walt Huddleston the diener? Angry? Not that I ever saw; a charming man, we got on famously. He took me to lunch one day and we discussed opera; I’m a buff, but he shamed me with his knowledge. No, I’m talking about the viscerally angry guy, short fellow, kind of stubby body, thinning hair …”

  My turn for confusion. “Will Lindy?”

  Caulfield’s eyes darkened at the name. “Lindy, that’s it. He was friendly and businesslike when Dr. Peltier introduced us, but when we were alone he wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t look at me, just skulked and muttered. Gave me hard looks from a distance. I’m positive I saw him spying on me a couple times.”

  “Are you sure you mean Willet Lindy, the administrator?” It didn’t make sense.

  For the first time during my visit Caulfield looked truly unsettled. “The only thing about working there that gave me pause was him. Scary guy.”

  I nodded vaguely, but inside my head was a windstorm of shifting conceptions. Will Lindy, scary guy. The words didn’t go together, were nonsense. Scary Lindy guy Will. Guy Lindy Will scary.

  But Caulfield had come up with: Will Lindy = Scary guy. A equation I had never thought possible for anyone to make.

  Willet Lindy?

  CHAPTER 31

  Suddenly, I had no idea who Will Lindy was.

  Was he the quiet, reserved Will Lindy I’d known for a year? Or Caulfield’s Will Lindy: sullen and angry? My Will Lindy was unwaveringly polite, Caulfield’s was a spy in the shadows. Mine was consummately pleasant; Caulfield’s stared daggers from a distance. Which was the real Will Lindy?

  Willet Lindy. Will Lindy… The name echoed in my head. Willet. Will. Willy. On Burlew’s broad back: Willy-Nilly, and Will it be big Boston or Little Indy?

  I heard the sound assert itself in my head.

  Will it … Willet. Oh, Jesus.

  Maybe it’s not the meaning of the word, but the sounds.

  Will it be big Boston or Little Indy? Will it. Willet. Then cut the itt from little and you had … l’indy. Willet Lindy, hidden in the mad scrawlings on Burlew’s back. My heart raced in my throat as I weighed the possibility of coincidence, of my need to make sense of something, anything.

  But what if… What if Will Lindy doesn’t want Caulfield at the morgue, for some reason hates him so much he can’t conceal it. Hates him so much he wants to harm him. But he can’t get to Caulfield: the man’s with Clair most of the day and in an expensive and secure motel at night.

  So he waits. After the hiring Lindy attacks Caulfield’s hands. He knows Mueller, or simply selects him at random. Through his work at the morgue Lindy knows several chemicals can mimic a coronary. Plus he’s demonstrated skills with everything from plumbing to electronics. A basic explosive device with a spring-loaded trigger and powder from a shotgun shell would be simple, the materials at any hardware store, directions rampant on the Internet. Clair is scheduled for the morning autopsy, but Lindy knows she traditionally offers the new hire the procedure. Lindy waylays Mueller, inserts the bomb, administers the chemical, and calls 911. Mueller ends up at the morgue, where Caulfield opens the body and triggers the device.

  My God, this makes sense. Why does Lindy want Caulfield out of the way? Why doesn’t he want him to have the job? Because he either hates Caulfield for some unknown reason, or he wants someone else to have the position.

  There’s only one other contender.

  Ava.

  I jabbed at the phone, missing the numbers, nearly swerving off the road into blue sky over treetops. I pulled to the side of the road, took a deep breath, and tried the phone again.

  Nothing. An electronic dead zone, cellular limbo. I jammed the truck into gear and fishtailed down the mountain, scaring hell out of a two guys in a truck coming the other way. They honked and cursed and stabbed their middle fingers. The road began to flatten. I tried the phone again.

  “Nautilus,” Harry barked. It sounded like he was on the far side of the universe.

  “Harry, check out Will Lindy’s whereabouts on the nights of the murders. I think Ava is the target of the messages, but keep Clair guarded too. I won’t get back for at least four hours. Call me with up-dates and keep trying, I’m going to be jumping between cells.”

  Harry didn’t linger. ”On it.”

  I downshifted, drifted sideways in the gravel, straightened back out. “Harry, wait.”

  “Still here.”

  “Be real careful around Lindy, bro. I think he’s an exotic.”

  “I’ll treat him like sweaty dynamite. Get your ass back here, brother.”

  I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and watched it bounce, onto the floor. In the split second of inattention my right-side tires slid into the rutted shoulder, yanked the steering wheel from my grip. Trees raced at me and I stood hard on the brakes, sliding sideways.

  The truck dropped into the ditch, the left-side tires spinning off the ground. I rocked the gearshift from reverse to first. Not enough traction. Screaming and cursing and pounding the steering wheel, I dragged myself out just as the two guys I’d nearly sideswiped drove up.

  “Sorry about the driving,” I said. “Help me get back on the road, I got an emergency.”

  They jumped out, red faced and swearing. “Sumbitch try’n drive us off the side, we’ll give you a fuckin’ emergency…”

  The first guy’s fist caught me behind the ear and sent me spinning into the second. He swung a looping right that I managed to block, cutting to the outside. I spun an elbow into his mouth and he fell to one knee. The first guy scrabbled in the truck bed and found a ball bat. He moved toward me as the bat drew slow circles in the air.

  “Bust your fuckin’ head open … “

  I pulled the .32 from my ankle holster. Their windshield was already cracked and the hollow point collapsed it across the truck’s dash like crinkly fabric.

  “Get my goddamn truck back on the road NOW!” I screamed, turning a headlight into dust for added emphasis.

  Yes-sir ring like Brit butlers, they had me road worthy in thirty seconds. I shot out two of their tires and left them leaping over the guardrail as I climbed back into my truck. My phone beeped. I grabbed it, dropped it in my lap, picked it up.

  Tell me she’s safe.

  Harry conveyed the facts without emotion. “Doc Peltier’s here at the morgue. There’s no trace of Lindy. He’s a no-show at work. First time in three years.”

  “What about Ava?” I said.

  “Her car’s there, but …”

  “She should be at home. Keep looking.”

  Over four hours to Mobile. I hung up and tried to remember everything I’d been taught in the police course on emergency driving. The phone rang. “Talk!” I bellowed.

  Voices in the background. Harry speaking to someone. The phone changed hands and I heard an unknown voice. “Carson, I want you to head north. There’s an old weigh station on the highw
ay at the 217-mile marker. A chopper’s set to meet you there.”

  “Who the hell is this?”

  “Your favorite boss, Carson.”

  Tom Mason. I didn’t recognize his voice; he was talking so fast he sounded normal. I kicked over toward the highway, figuring times. A half hour to the chopper, then maybe an hour and change to get back to Mobile. And then … what?

  I was passing vehicles like they were bolted to the road when lights sparkled in the rearview. State police. I figured I’d been busted by the rednecks in the truck and eased up on the gas, thinking of a fast way to sell my story. The lights lit up my truck cab and I pulled toward the shoulder, cursing.

  The static passed by with horn blasting and his hand waving forward out the window, Keep going, keep going. I jumped in behind and we ran a solid one-ten all the way to the weigh station, where I saw a big helo with the state seal on it. I flicked a salute to my escort and jumped into the state bird of Alabama, a Sikorsky. The pilot studied me through his dark helmet visor.

  “I don’t know who you are, buddy,” he yelled over the banshee engine, “but you sure’s hell got friends in high places.” He tossed me a helmet and the chopper thundered aloft. I suddenly remembered the dedication ceremony at the morgue. Who was chatting up the attorney general like an old fishing buddy?

  Clair.

  The land flowed by like a green flood and I used the time to breathe down my fear and focus on Willet Lindy. Who had access to the schedules? Lindy. He could “aim” the bodies, kill on the nights when he knew Ava would be first up for the post, a fresh body ready for her inspection.

  But what was Lindy’s motive? What did he gain from his aimed autopsies? A perverse voyeurism? He’d never been in the autopsy suite while I’d covered a post. My mind raced through the process of an autopsy, what it generated: Paperwork. Results. Conclusions. Speculations. Reports. The pro sector did the postmortem, keeping track of the process … giving a play-by-play to the microphone.

  To the tape recorder. Then to the transcriber. Then into the records. I saw the pilot twiddle a knob on the console and talk into his helmet mike. He reached over and pushed my helmet mike into position.

  “You got communication.”

  I heard Harry’s voice crackle in my ears and yelled, “What’s going on, Harry, what’s happening?”

  “It’s like Lindy and Ava fell off the face of the world.”

  A cold hand gripped my heart and began to squeeze. “Is Clair there?”

  “Across the room.”

  “Ask her who handles the tapes made of the posts.”

  A few seconds of muffled voices and Harry returned. “Lindy’s responsibility. He makes sure they get to the transcriber, then catalogs the actual voice recordings. Dr. Peltier says all the electronics stuff is wired to his office, voice and everything else.”

  “What’s everything else mean?”

  More indistinct voices. I heard Clair in the background.

  “What’s the commotion, Harry?”

  “Sit tight, Cars. New info arriving, strange stuff.”

  “About Ava? Is it about Ava, Harry?”

  “Hang on.”

  Montgomery was five miles ahead of us. It was five miles behind before Harry’s voice crackled into my ears again.

  “Lindy not only has voice recordings wired to his office, he has video input. Part of the security system installed after the bomb. Video cams in the halls, entrances, and so forth. They feed to screens and recorders in a big cabinet in Lindy’s office.”

  The pilot had the engine maxed. “Louder, Harry, I can’t hear!”

  “Get this, Carson: Lindy’s repositioned some of the cameras you can’t see them, they’re like pencil erasers. He’s got four cameras in the ceiling above and around table one, four different views. He’s spying on the autopsies, Carson.”

  Another rustle and mumbling into my headset. Yelling, anger. Harry reappeared. “I found some people who might know more about Lindy. They’re heading into town now. But there’s a problem here.”

  I heard a familiar voice barking orders in the background. “Squill,” I spat.

  “He’s pricked out to the max. Maybe I’ll go take the bastard’s head off.”

  “Stay cool, Harry. I can deal with Squill.”

  “He’s taking over. I think I was just suspended.”

  “Any sign of Ava … Harry?”

  I heard a popping sound and angry voices. Then Squill’s voice filled my head. “How are you at bagging groceries, Ryder?” he said. The headset crackled. And went off.

  In the distance I saw the gray-blue of Mobile Bay, dark clouds rolling from the west like a shroud. “Big storm coming,” the pilot said.

  CHAPTER 32

  “You’re suspended, Ryder. That’s just the first move. Then it’s off the force.”

  Squill jumped me the second I stepped from the chopper into the parking lot of the motel on the northwest side of downtown. Beside him was his fresh monkey, Bobby Neeland. The new chimp had new shades. Harry’s unmarked screeched into the lot behind them. I pushed past Squill and sprinted to Harry.

  “Ava?” I yelled.

  He shook his head. “Nothing yet. There’s some odd stuff in Lindy’s basement. We were looking it over when “

  Squill was red faced, voice barely controlled. Neeland looked like he was having a jolly time under the captain’s umbrella. Squill jabbed a finger at Harry. “One more word to Ryder and you’re gone, too, Nautilus.”

  Harry ignored Squill. “I got a woman in the motel for you to talk to, Cars. Here’s her story “

  Neeland was in the full testosterone bloom of being Squill’s selectman. He stuck his face in Harry’s. “Listen to the captain, Nautilus. He wants your black face to shut up right-“

  Barely turning from me, Harry buried his fist in Neeland’s gut. Neeland made a few little wet sounds until his knees crumpled and he fell to the asphalt like a gunnysack of mashed potatoes.

  Squill said, “You’re both under arrest for assaulting an officer in the performance of his duties. It’s the end of life as you know it.”

  Two cruisers bore down the street, lights flashing. Squill waved them over. Neeland tottered woozily to one knee, a green strand of snot hanging from his nose. Squill started counting coup on his pink fingers. “Assault, insubordination, lying …”

  “Your inexperience is showing, Captain,” I said, as calmly as I could muster. “Maybe you should have spent more time at autopsies.”

  He wheeled on me. “What are you babbling about, Ryder?”

  I smiled. It wasn’t what he expected to see. “Our little talk by the autopsy table, Captain. About DC Plackett and various other events? When you were candid. Remember?”

  Squill stage-laughed. “You might want to speak with a professional, Ryder, get some help with those delusions. You’ll have the time.”

  The cruisers angled in, braking hard. Flashing light spangled our faces. I said, “Remember how the pro sector talks all the time?”

  “What?”

  “At the morgue. The person doing the autopsy is always talking.”

  I pulled from my pocket the white envelope Ava had given me, tore off the end, puffed it open with a breath. I shook a black cassette tape into my palm.

  “Did you think they were talking to you?”

  I tossed him the tape and he made a fumbling catch. “The tape kept running after Burlew’s autopsy,” I said. “All through our little chat. Good sound quality. Even on the copies.” Doors opened on the cruisers. “So, Captain, you can either tell everybody how you carved Deputy Chief Plackett from a dung heap or …”

  “Or what?” Squill whispered, his face drained of color.

  “Or you can tell Harry and me what a great job the PSIT is doing. And to keep doing it.”

  Neeland made a croaking sound and threw up. Fried chicken and gravy spattered across Squill’s shiny black shoes.

  “Rumbling and tumbling,” Harry noted.

  “I wa
nt you to see something,” Harry said. “Then we’ll talk to a woman who knew Lindy when he was growing up.” Harry passed me an eight-by-ten brown envelope as we ran toward the motel. “Check this out,” he said quietly. “Got it from the sheriff’s department in Choctaw County. Lindy grew up on a farm up outside Butler.”

  I opened the envelope and pulled out a faxed photo.

  Ava. In a booking photo from the Choctaw County Sheriff’s Department. Front and profile. Arrest number.

  Almost Ava. The nose was a shade too long, the forehead a touch too high, and the eyes seemed like eyes from a taxidermist’s inventory, something piscine, or perhaps reptilian.

  Harry waited for my shock to subside. “Lindy’s mother. Arrested for child endangerment and related offenses. Kept him chained in a pantry, for one.” Harry sighed. “Plus other bad things. He was sixteen at the time. She died two years later in prison, cirrhosis.”

  I said, “When Ava walked into the morgue for her job interview “

  “Snapped our boy like a nickel pencil.”

  Harry knocked on the door of room 116. A dusty Choctaw County Sheriff’s Department cruiser sat in front. I nodded my thanks to the deputy behind the wheel.

  Harry said, “The woman is Velene Clay. She’s fifty-three. Youth-services director around Butler. She’s with her aunt who lived on the farm next to the Lindys. Not a big town.”

  “The aunt know anything?” I asked, wanting to shoulder through the door, yell, scream, get things moving, but if there had ever been a time to soak up impressions and details, it was now.

  Harry shook his head. “She’s almost eighty and has Alzheimer’s. That’s why the motel: Ms. Clay couldn’t leave her at home.”

  “Find anyone else who knew Lindy way back when?”

  “He wasn’t out a lot.”

  The room was warm, the AC barely breathing. Out of concern for the wire-thin woman in the wheelchair between the twin beds, I supposed. She had a crocheted shawl hanging from hard-boned shoulders and her white hair was combed but not subdued, strands poking out like frosty antennas. Emotionless blue eyes fixed on the blank television. Her hands moved in short jerks from her lap to her lips, smoking an invisible cigarette.